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PLATE LVIL EGGS AND YOUNG OF THE EMPEEOE PENGUIN. 



FIG. 1. From a photograph by L C. BERNACCHI (Be. 257, |-plate), Sept. 22, 1903 ; 

 shows a group of frozen Emperor Penguin chickens and eggs, in the 

 attitudes in which they were found dead at the "rookery." 



FIGS. 2 and 3. From photographs by E. W. SKELTON (Sk. 225 and 226, J-plates), 

 Oct. 1903 ; are of two young Emperor Penguins which were kept alive for 

 some months in the ship. 



FIG. 4. From a photograph by E. W. SKELTON (Sk. 220, ^-plate) ; represents, from 

 left to right, the eggs of the Emperor Penguin (Aptenodytes Jorsteri], of the 

 King Penguin (Aptenodytes patagonica), and of the Adelie Penguin (Pygoscelis 

 adelice}. The weight of an Emperor Penguin's egg is 1 lb., and its length 

 about five inches. 



After counting the dead Emperor Penguin chickens, and the deserted and 

 frozen eggs which were lying on the sea-ice at Cape Crozier, it was calculated, 

 by comparing this number with the number of the living, that no less than 77 per 

 cent, of the young birds die before they shed their downy plumage. There is no 

 doubt that most of the deaths result from anxiety on the part of the unemployed 

 adults to nurse, an anxiety which leads constantly to scrimmages for the possession 

 of a chick, whereby the chick is often damaged. If a living chick cannot be 

 obtained, a dead one will often be taken as a substitute for the time, and as they 

 are hard frozen, almost all the dead chickens show the effect of this post mortem 

 nursing in a loss of limbs, or at least of downy covering. 



See Nat. Hist. Rep., vol. ii., Aves, pp. 5 et seq. 



